'Downton Abbey' musical spoof coming to Mountain View CPA on Nov. 24

While season 4 of Downton Abbey is already unfolding in the United Kingdom, American fans can only sip their tea and wait impatiently. Unfortunately, the crazy-popular British series doesn't return to U.S. TV screens until early January. To help ease the tension somewhat, into the breach strides San Francisco's Lamplighters Music Theatre with Upside-Downton Abbey, or The Lass That Loved a Chauffeur.

It's this season's installment of the company's annual parody/fundraiser, to be presented in the South Bay for the first time in the gala's 47-year history. The spoof of the award-winning soap opera will take place Nov. 24 at 4 p.m. at Mountain View's Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St. There will be a champagne reception with the costumed cast and crew afterward, with audience members likewise encouraged to dress up.

"We have been building a fabulous audience in Mountain View over the last couple of years, a November date was available, so we decided to give our audience there the opportunity to see Gala in their own venue," says Sarah Vardigans, managing director of Lamplighters Music Theatre.

The show is set to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, among others, appropriate since Lamplighters was founded to produce the pair's classic comic operas. Head writer Jonathan Spencer is quick to point out that Upside-Downton was very much a committee effort. About 10 "mad, crazy people" were responsible for all the zingers that will make sense no matter the level of the audience's Downton Abbey expertise.

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"With our galas we try to provide jokes for all comers, from those who know the material well to those who don't know it at all," Spencer says. Directing Upside-Downton is Phil Lowery, last seen in these parts in October when he helmed the Lyric Theatre of San Jose production of Ruddigore.

Spencer, a Lamplighter since 1990, led the writing effort for one previous gala--It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Amazing Race Around the World in 79½ Days--staged two years ago. "For the last 10 years or so we've usually spoofed something hot in the media," he says. These include Mock the Vote for the 2008-09 season and You Can't Bite City Hall, a 2010-11 send-up of the Twilight craze.

Besides writing and singing, Spencer is an expert at costume capers; in his day job he's the production manager for the lavish Bracebridge dinner at Yosemite National Park. Every December the famed Ahwahnee Hotel is transformed into a 17th-century English manor for olde-timey fun. "It's a year-round production," he says.

One wonders what the dowager countess would make of someone with such a rigorous work ethic. That grande dame, played by Oscar winner Maggie Smith in the series, will be interpreted by F. Lawrence Ewing here, the only character who will be portrayed by someone of the opposite sex. Fittingly, according to Spencer, it was the first role to be cast.